The Spawn of ChatGPT Will Try to Sell You Things
Browder of DoNotPay is not the only person who sees ChatGPT and the technology behind it as a way to automate persuasion. One doctor posted a video...
Welcome to Digital Nomadland
Seen from afar, the parish of Ponta do Sol looks as compact and picturesque as a postcard. There’s a small roundabout at the center, a gas...
Amazon Investors Demand Answers About Its Cloud’s Human Rights Record
The shareholder proposal also calls for a reassessment of a $1.2 billion contract with the government of Israel, shared with competitor Google. The companies provide cloud...
How Should You Cut Through the Noise of This Year’s Headlines?
In this month’s newsletter I talk about music—both literally and metaphorically. What are you hearing and listening to? Let me know in the comments. Sturm und...
A New Lawsuit Accuses Meta of Inflaming Civil War in Ethiopia
On November 3, 2021, Meareg Amare, a professor of chemistry at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia, was gunned down outside his home. Amare, who was ethnically...
Sam Bankman-Fried’s House of Cards Is Falling Down
A written preview of Ray’s testimony, published in advance of the hearing, gave the first indication that Bankman-Fried was in for a rough ride. “Never in my...
A Tale of Two Nuclear Plants Reveals Europe’s Energy Divide
A forest of wind turbines rises out of the fields on both sides of the highway running east out of Vienna. But at the border with...
How Chinese Netizens Swamped China’s Internet Controls
The tragedy came as frustrations with zero-Covid policies were already starting to spike. Violent confrontations had broken out between workers and security at a Foxconn plant in...
Why the World Fell for FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried
Back in April I paid $12 to “attend” a virtual event with 30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Around 45 other people registered for the Zoom, which...
We’re in Denial About the True Cost of a Twitter Implosion
Think of how devastating it was to the anti-vax influencers Alex Berenson and Robert Malone to be kicked off Twitter. They happened to be grifters. But...